Injustice for all

28

Three days after Katie Dean visited the DEA agent, Aunt Mary called her into the den from the kitchen.

“They just did a teaser for the news about a big drug bust,” Aunt Mary said. “I think this might be it.”

Katie sat on the edge of Luke’s bed. A male reporter appeared on the TV screen. He was wearing a camouflage uniform and holding a microphone. He was outdoors. Behind him was a wall of gray smoke.

“Local law enforcement authorities are saying this marijuana field is the biggest ever discovered in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,” the reporter said. “Agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department descended from helicopters into this five-acre field early this morning after receiving a tip from an anonymous informant. More than twenty- five hundred plants have been cut and burned. Police estimate the marijuana’s wholesale value at more than three and a half million dollars. The street value is estimated at close to ten million dollars. Sevier County Sheriff Hobart Brackens says the marijuana was most likely meant for out-of-state buyers.”

A heavy man with jowls like a bulldog came onto the screen. He was wearing a cowboy hat with a silver star on it. Beneath his face were the words “Sheriff Hobart Brackens.”

“An operation like this has to be a wholesaler,” the sheriff said. “We’ve had information in the past that marijuana growers were operating in these mountains, but until now, we’ve never been able to find any of the patches.”

Aunt Mary turned off the television set.

“There,” she said matter-of-factly. “What’s done is done. I don’t want anyone in this house to speak of it ever again.”

The firebomb came through Katie’s bedroom window the next week. It was two in the morning on a Thursday. Katie had watched an Atlanta Braves baseball game with Luke before straggling off to bed around eleven. She was dreaming of swimming at the base of a massive waterfall in the bright sunshine, surrounded by brightly colored fish, when the sound of breaking glass and igniting fuel jolted her awake.

It took several seconds for her to realize the bedroom was on fire. The Molotov cocktail had landed against the wall near the door and exploded. The flames were already raging by the time Katie ripped the covers back and jumped to her feet. She heard men shouting outside her window, then heard more windows crash downstairs. She screamed. The flames were racing up from the foot of the bed, gobbling the purple quilt Aunt Mary had made and given to her for Christmas three years earlier. Smoke was already causing her to choke, the heat searing her skin and throat.

Luke. I have to get to Luke.

She couldn’t go toward the door that led to the steps. It was too hot. The flames would consume her, but she had to get out. She unlatched the lock on the broken window and pushed it up. The roof above the front porch was less than ten feet below her. She crawled up into the window frame, cutting her left foot on a piece of broken glass in the process, and jumped. The steep pitch of the roof below sent her skidding toward the edge. Her elbows and knees hit the rough shingles, and she rolled onto her side, once, twice, three times… and then she was falling. She landed on her right side in the grass of the front yard. Her elbow jammed into her rib cage, and she heard the sickening sound of bones breaking. She tried to stand, but found she couldn’t even breathe.

Katie looked up toward the front of the house. Dark smoke was billowing from beneath the soffit, and she could see flames climbing the curtains and reaching out like the devil’s fingers through the windows. Katie willed herself to her knees. The heat was so intense she felt her eyebrows beginning to singe. She lay down on her back and used her feet to push herself away from the inferno.